


Sanguine

by Luzula



Category: Rotkäppchen | Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Coming of Age, Fairy Tales, Gen, Sex Education
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-31
Updated: 2011-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-22 01:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luzula/pseuds/Luzula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Red keeps to the path, until the day when she doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanguine

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Svenska available: [Blodröd](https://archiveofourown.org/works/710457) by [Luzula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luzula/pseuds/Luzula)



> A lot of versions of this story seem to be dark, which I can understand given the original story. This one isn't, though. You could say it's about coming of age, and about sex education. : ) I'm grateful to [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/lyrstzha/profile)[**lyrstzha**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/lyrstzha/) for beta-reading and for the title.

"Don't leave the path, Red. Promise me you won't," her mother said.

"I won't," Red said obediently. She shuffled her feet, eager to be off, but her mother wasn't finished.

"There are wolves in that forest. Just last week one of Aunt Maria's hens were gone, and there was blood on the ground."

"I'll be careful, I promise."

"Well, all right. And ask Grandma if there's anything else she needs. Eggs or flour, maybe?" Her mother sighed. "I don't know why she lives in that cottage in the woods. She ought to move into the village."

"I'll ask her about the food," Red said.

"Don't stay too long, and be sure to come back before it's dark. Well, off with you, then. I need to finish the washing."

Red walked down the road sedately until she was out of her mother's sight, but then skipped a few steps, glad to be out and away. The skipping made the jars in her basket clink together, so she stopped, but the sunshine and green grass and spring flowers still made her happy. She was going to Grandma, who was always very interesting and told her stories, which her mother never had time for.

She reached the edge of the woods, and they didn't seem dark and dangerous at all. The forest floor was covered with white flowers, and the leaves of the trees were just unfurling, tender and small. They had a bright green color that made everything seem new. Even the spruce trees were tipped with new shoots at the ends of their dark dour branches.

But Red was a dutiful girl and didn't leave the path, even though she would have loved to pick some of the white flowers and follow the little brook in among the trees. Once she saw something moving in the depths of the forest, and wondered if it was a wolf. Her steps quickened a little.

But it could have been anything, a hare perhaps, or just the branches of a tree moving in the wind. Red reached her grandmother's cabin safely.

"Red! Come here, my child." Red's grandmother got up slowly from her kneeling position in the vegetable patch, one leg at a time.

"You grow taller every day, I think," Grandma said, patting her on the cheek.

"Mama sent you cheese and butter and some bread, and a bottle of milk," Red said, holding out the basket.

"That's very good of her. You thank her for me."

"I will." Red went into the kitchen to put the basket on the table, and then went out to Grandma again. "What are you sowing? Can I help?"

"Oh, bless you. My knees are tired of this." Grandma poured the seeds into Red's hands carefully. "This row is for carrots. And mind you put the seeds this distance apart," she showed Red with her hands, "and cover them with this much earth." She showed Red the proper thickness of the cover with the distance between her gnarled thumb and forefinger.

"Mama said to ask if you needed anything else. Eggs or flour, maybe?" Red asked as she carefully put the seeds down into the moist ground.

"My own hens are laying well, but some flour wouldn't go amiss."

"Don't the wolves eat your hens, when you live in the middle of the forest?" Red asked, thinking of Aunt Maria's missing hen and the bloody traces that her mother had spoken of.

"No, no. I've got a sturdy henhouse where I lock them up at night," Grandma said, pointing to a shed against the side of the cottage. "Wolves won't hurt you, if you just take the proper precautions."

"Oh," said Red, and finished the row.

They went into the cabin for a bite to eat, and Red ate thick slices of bread and butter with a good appetite, with milk and some of Grandma's apple sauce from last fall on the side.

"I have something for you, child," Grandma said, going over to the chest by her bed.

"For me?" Red said, eager to see what it was.

"You'll be a grown woman soon--I shouldn't call you child any longer." Grandma took out a cloak and gave it to Red. It was made of thick red wool, and Red held it up to her face. The cloth smelled of the oaken chest and was soft against her skin.

"Oh, Grandma, it's wonderful." Red put it over her shoulders and spun around, then pulled up the hood and drew the cloak around her. She felt warm and protected.

"It was mine, when I was younger," Grandma said, smiling a little.

"Thank you," Red said, impulsively hugging Grandma, feeling the angular bones of her under the skin.

"It suits you," Grandma said.

They went out again to work on the vegetable patch, but Red saw that the sun was lower than she had thought. "I should go back to the village. I promised Mama that I would come home before dark."

Grandma nodded. "Go, then."

"I'll come back soon, I promise."

Red hurried along the path. Wolves came out at night, she knew, but it wasn't dark yet. She would have time. As she came to the outskirts of the village, someone hailed her.

"Good evening, miss!" It was a young man on horseback, only five years or so older than Red, but at her age this seemed like a world of difference.

"Good evening," Red said, trying to sound older than she was. The young man had adressed her almost as if she were his own age, and she was very aware of her beautiful new cloak hanging about her.

He slowed his horse to her pace. "Would you happen to know if this village has an inn?"

"It's just down the road on your right," Red said, glad to be able to help.

"Thank you," said the man, but he didn't speed up again. "And what's a lovely girl like you doing on the road at this hour?"

Red flushed in confusion--she wasn't used to anyone calling her a lovely girl. "I'm just going home, sir." Then she remembered what her mother had told her about strangers. She swept the cloak around herself protectively. "My mother is waiting for me. I must get home."

"Well, thank you for the help." The man tipped his hat at her and rode on down the road. Red let out a breath of what was mostly relief.

"There you are!" her mother said when she came home. "At last. Take care of your brother for me, I have to make dinner." And Red was swept up in the bustle of household chores, distracting her little brother so he wouldn't bother Mama.

"What's that thing you're wearing?" her mother asked her as she chopped onions.

Red took off the cloak and hung it carefully out of the way, so her brother wouldn't get his dirty fingers on it. "Grandma gave it to me," she said proudly.

"Huh. Far too fine to wear except on feast days," her mother sniffed.

Red privately wanted to wear it every day, but she didn't say so. "Yes, Mama."

"Did you stay on the path? You didn't wander about in the forest, did you?"

"No, Mama."

Her father came in from working on the fields then, and talk shifted to the weather and how the barley needed some rain. But Red took the cloak, and when no one saw, she put it in the chest near her bed to keep it safe.

***

A few days later, she brought Grandma the promised flour. She didn't leave the path, just as her mother had again told her, and walked past all the delights of the forest in spring. But there was one tiny little spark of disobedience in her--she put the cloak in the basket with the flour, and when she was out of sight of home, she stopped to put it on. She didn't need it for warmth, but she loved the swirl of it around her and the bright red of the cloth.

She helped Grandma prune the apple tree, climbing up into the tree where Grandma couldn't reach.

"Cut off the long thin branches, the ones reaching straight up into the sky," Grandma told her.

"Isn't it cruel to the tree to cut them off?" Red asked.

Grandma shook her head. "It will bear more fruit that way. You'll see there are no flowers on those long thin ones." This was true--the white blossoms grew only on the older branches further down.

When she went home, Red took off the cloak before she got home, so her mother wouldn't see that she had worn it.

***

Red knocked on the door of the neighboring farm house, then went in without waiting for a reply. "Hello? Anyone here?"

"Red, is that you?" Sarah said, coming around the corner from the kitchen, dusting flour off her hands. She and Red had been playmates when they were younger, despite Sarah being a few years older.

"It's me," Red said unnecessarily.

Sarah looked full to bursting of some secret, or news, and was plainly looking forward to telling it. Red had already heard the news from her mother, who had had it from Sarah's mother, but didn't mind letting Sarah tell it again.

"I'm betrothed. To Peter Miller," Sarah said proudly.

"Really?" Red asked, willing to be surprised.

"Oh, yes," Sarah said. "We'll be married next summer." She leaned in closer to whisper. "He is _so handsome!_ But I suppose you're still too young to understand such things."

"I suppose I am," said Red, stung by Sarah's manner. She left the subject. "Anyway, Papa sent me to ask if you knew the fence down by the south field is broken."

"I don't know about that. But I'll tell Mama."

"All right. Well, I'll be going." Red turned to leave.

She'd looked up to Sarah when she was younger, and Sarah's entry into the adult world before her seemed like a desertion. Sarah had filled out, and had full breasts and hips now. Red supposed she was beautiful. Red herself was still almost as flat-chested as a child, though she was growing tall. Her bones ached sometimes with the growing, and sometimes she thought her breasts ached, too, what there was of them. She wondered if she'd grow as buxom as Sarah, too. It seemed strange to imagine.

***

"I don't want you going to visit Grandma's for a while," her mother said.

"Why not?" Red asked, surprised. She'd been looking forward to her next visit.

"One of the cows on the next farm was taken by a wolf last night. Dreadful bloody deed, they say. Didn't even eat the whole carcass."

Red felt a thrill of fear, or excitement, run through her. But she didn't argue, only nodded in obedience.

It wasn't until a week later that her mother let her visit Grandma again. Red walked the forest path quickly, her heart pounding. She didn't see any wolf, but it might still be there, lurking. Red's neck tingled, as if there was someone, or something, behind her. She almost wished she hadn't worn the red cloak today--it made her feel so visible.

No wolf appeared, though, and Red reached Grandma's cottage in safety.

The carrots and other vegetables that she had sown early in the spring were poking up in neat rows now, and Red helped Grandma weed, so that the young shoots would not be smothered. Beside the vegetable patch was a herb garden.

"I know that's mint," Red said, pointing to the bushy thicket growing in an old tub, to keep it from taking over the whole garden. "And that's thyme--Mama puts it in the stew. But what's that?" She pointed to a tall plant with a stalk of yellow flowers and soft, hairy leaves.

"That's verbascum," Grandma said. "If you've got a cough, you can make tea from the leaves."

"You know an awful lot about plants."

"Not so much. Enough to know how much I don't know, perhaps."

"I heard..." Red began, but then thought better of it.

"You heard what?"

"Well. Someone in the village said he thought you were a witch."

Grandma snorted. "I'm no witch. Of course, if he thinks all old women who live alone and know a bit about the uses of herbs are witches, then I suppose I am a witch. Do you think so?"

"I don't know," Red said. Grandma only smiled at her, the wrinkles beside her eyes crinkling up.

The sun was hot, even in the middle of the forest, and Red went to get a drink of water and use the outhouse. As she sat over the hole in the wooden bench, she saw a patch of blood in her underclothes. She stared. What was wrong with her? She touched a finger between her legs, and it came out red.

Grandma looked up in surprise when Red came out. "I'm...I'm bleeding," she stammered, not knowing how to explain it.

"I've got some rags you can use," Grandma said, not sounding upset at all.

"But--what's wrong with me? Did I hurt myself somehow?"

"Is it your first time? Don't tell me your mother didn't tell you this would happen," Grandma said, shaking her head.

"Tell me about what?" What was happening to her? Red's heart pounded.

"Oh, child," Grandma said, hugging Red to her. "No, not a child--I suppose you're a woman now. This happens to all women. You bleed every month, for a few days."

"But why?"

"It's so you can have children."

"Bleeding makes me have children?" Red asked, alarmed.

"No, no. I don't know what your mother is thinking, not to tell you these things. The bleeding shows that your body is grown up enough to have children. But it's being with a man that gets you with child. You take a man's prick into you, in between your legs. And when his seed comes into you, that's what makes a child grow."

Red listened to this with fascination.

"Have you never seen the bull put to the cows?" Grandma asked.

Red shook her head. "Papa said it's not for little girls to see."

"Humph. Girls have to learn these things some time."

Red put together some remarks that she'd heard her father's farmhands say, about "putting it in". So that's what they meant. "Will I...what's it like?"

Grandma laughed. "Depends who you do it with. I've outlived a husband and had lovers, too, though you wouldn't think it to look at me now. It can be good, if you do it with the right man. Very good. Not so good with the wrong man."

"Do you get with child every time?"

"No, it doesn't take every time. If that happened, there'd be children everywhere. And there are ways of keeping from getting with child. I'll teach you how, if you want."

Red tucked this bit of information away, although she felt like this wasn't quite part of her world yet.

***

That night in her bed, Red lay awake while her brother and sister slept in the other beds. The room was dark, and she could hear their slow sleeping breaths.

Grandma had given her some rags to put in her underclothes and told her to wash them out if they were soaking through, and put in new ones instead. She'd have to tell her mother in the morning, and ask her for new rags. But she'd kept quiet about it tonight.

Red was a woman now, and it was her secret, until tomorrow.

She put her hand down under the covers and drew her nightgown up, then put her hand inside her underclothes. Grandma had said--you put it inside of you? Where? Red explored the warm wet place with her fingers, then pushed carefully inside a little way. Oh.

Red held her breath in the dark. She felt strange, warm and tingling, and her breasts ached.

***

Red walked slowly along the path with her red cloak slung across her shoulders. Her mother would have said she was dawdling, and maybe she was. The trees shaded the path, and left only flecks of sunshine reaching the ground. When Red reached the brook that crossed the path, she stopped and looked into the forest, which was deep and green and tempting.

Red took a deep breath, and stepped off the path.


End file.
